


The Perks of Being Dead

by Sherb42



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trans, Gen, Nano-Rimmer, Season/Series 08, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 21:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17905919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherb42/pseuds/Sherb42
Summary: Lister notices something rather interesting about Rimmer while he gets changed for a Canary mission.





	The Perks of Being Dead

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen a few things about a trans!Lister, but Hardly anything about a trans!Rimmer - so why not. I first started this drabble ages ago but I stopped cause it felt weird to type out, but hopefully it's somewhat decent now.

The jail cell was its usually dingy, badly-lit mess. Pipes creaked a moaned around them, the light furthest away from then that they weren’t allowed to turn off flickered aggressively. Arnold Rimmer was currently standing by their small mesh table getting changed for his next Canary mission. Of course, their next mission wasn’t for a good chunk of time, but that didn’t change the fact that Rimmer was already getting dressed in advanced. 

Lister was lying on his bunk, refusing to get changed until the very last moment, like usual. Rimmer always hated that lack of punctuality, Lister was instead doing filling out personality quizzes for both him and Rimmer. Rimmer didn’t answer any of the questions when he was asked so Lister just filled them out for him. This created a lot of fun results as Rimmer ended up being a sex-crazed, diva of the night with a passion for all things wild and experimental. 

Or at least, that’s what the tests in the woman’s magazine had told him. 

“How many times do you and your guy get it on each week?” Lister began to read out the next question as if it was a saucy romance novel, “A: It would be impossible to count. You can’t help but jump him every time you see him, B: You get it on regularly but also enjoy quiet nights just chatting and catching up,” Lister’s voice changed to his normal one, “or C: You try and schedule it on a Saturday and/or Sunday?” 

Lister looked up at Rimmer to try and gauge a response before he noticed something new about the other man. 

At the same moment that Lister had turned his head, Rimmer had his arms up with the black Canary turtleneck over his head. He quickly pulled it down over his torso causing his hair to poof out from out from it, but the damage was already done. 

Fine, neat white scars lined the underside of Rimmer’s pecks. They could only be seen for half a moment, and his skin was already incredibly pale making it hard to notice unless you were looking directly at his chest – which Lister had been doing. 

“Hey – woah! Wait up - that’s new!” Lister said out loud, not really thinking about what he was saying. 

Rimmer tucked in his shirt into his overalls and looked down at it. “Listy it’s just my uniform.” He replied softly. Apparently, today’s mission was going to be somewhere reasonably hot so he hadn’t felt the need to put on any more layers than he needed too. 

“Nah, nah, what’s underneath it.” Lister replied, moving so he was sitting up on his bunk. He put this magazine and pen down beside him. 

Rimmer looked back at him, he squinted for a second. “What does that mean?” It didn’t fully click with him what Lister was asking. 

“Ya know what I mean, ya smegpot.” Lister said as he jumped down from his buck with a very ungraceful ‘thud.’ “You’ve got those scars all across ya chest, don’t ya?”

Rimmer took a couple more seconds for the cogs in his mind to turn before he realised as to what Lister was asking. He pulled out his chair and sat down on it with a slump. “Nothing.” He said flatly. “Anyways, what do you care?” Rimmer snapped with a slight shake of his head. Discussion over, no thanks.

Lister moved over to the table and sat down. “I don’t really, just wonderin’.” 

Rimmer gave him a hash look that said _‘yes you do.’_

Lister clicked his tongue a few times. “I hope you don’t mind me askin’ about it, but I’ve seen your body naked before, I’ve even been in it for a bit back when we swapped bodies, and I never saw anything out of the ordinary like that.”

“That hologram version of me?”

“Uh-huh.” Lister said with a nod. 

“Well,” Rimmer seemed to roll what he was going to say around on his face. It was hard to get a good read on him – it was the sort of soft face that he only made a few times before anybody. Lister was still looking at him, at least he was paying attention. Rimmer coughed into his hand. “Holograms can change what they look like – they’re just all data. I-he probably just asked Holly to fix it up for him.” Rimmer said before he crossed his arms. 

Lister began to play with a couple of his dreads, “I guess that’s one upside of being dead.”

Rimmer smirked a tiny smile. “No more of that smeggy stuff, no more dysphoria.” He said quietly to himself it in that tone of voice you speak in when a 3am infomercial lures you in. _Oh yeah, that blender does look good. Yeahhh, I would use that exercise machine._ It makes you wonder how the old Rimmer had reacted to all of that way back when.

Rimmer looked back at Lister. “And if you must know, it wouldn’t have changed all that much.” He said in a tone that seemed to dismiss the whole ordeal as if it was nothing. “I was able to go one of the best surgeons on Calisto.”

Lister began to chew on the end of a dread. “Sounds expensive.”

“Well, I used the alimony money my parents gave me to live off when I divorced them. All I had to do was save all that up and start from scratch will all the rest.”  
Lister tapped the table with his right hand. “So, this is a reeeeeal long-time thing for ya, huh?”

“Yes. It’s all in the past now, anyways.” 

It didn’t seem much like Rimmer to keep quiet about stuff in his past that affected him. This whole thing actually took Lister by quite the surprise by how mature and casual he seemed to be about it all. Lister had never actually seen Rimmer take any injections, or even get dressed while Lister was in the room now that he thought about it. Or maybe Rimmer was just good at hiding how he felt about it, that could very much be a possibility. 

 

“What was your name before ‘Arnold?’” Lister asked, keeping with the day’s theme of not really thinking before he spoke. 

“What?” Rimmer couldn’t believe what he had just gotten asked. 

“C’mooooon.” Lister tried to worm the information out of him. “You know a whole bunch of stupid smeg about me.” He didn't mean for his approach to have come across so forced and slightly invasive. 

“That’s still not at all information that you need to know, Lister.”

“Was it ‘Arleen?’”

Rimmer shot him an accusatory, more-than-slightly offended glance. How the hell did he get it right the first time? Lister always had a knack for stuff like that, it was frustrating.  
“Your female double had that name, I guess you two might have swapped or something.” Lister said, explaining himself with a murmur. He already felt a bit guilty, he probably should just stop talking now. “Sorry,” Lister eventually said weakly with half his hair in front of his face. 

“You should be.” Rimmer 'humpth'ed with a snap. Man, he hadn’t been called since he was what, 12? His parents had refused to call him anything else, resulting in a bitter addressing towards him that ended up just being ‘Rimmer’ whenever they needed to address him directly. 

There was a moment of quiet between the two of them. 

“I just find all that stuff so interesting, ya know? How people change and all of that.”

“Well I don’t.” Rimmer said with purpose. “Dallying on stuff that doesn’t matter a smegging inch isn’t something that I pride myself in doing.”

“Rimmer, you study 20th-century telegraph poles as a hobby and once spent three days sorted all the loose cords on Starbug into their production dates and amount of wires in each of them.”

“So?”

There was a loud buzz on the intercom that brought the two of them back into the present. A warning for the Canary soldiers that they would be needed by the entrance to the Tank in ten minutes. 

Lister looked up from the table before going over the briefcase with his Canary uniform horribly shoved inside and began to throw it on. It was a nice uniform, you could give the JMC that, but it being a turtle neck, vest, and overalls made it an annoying one for those stuck inside of it. Rimmer just kept his own eyes on the table, drumming his fingers as he waited for Lister to get changed so they could go. After drumming for a little bit he did up the rest of his uniform and tightly re-laced his boots. 

 

As the two of them walked down to go on their next Canary mission, Lister came up closer to Rimmer. Rimmer tried to march away but Lister just followed in closer like an eager dog. “I’m not gonna tell anybody yaknow,” Lister said once he was close. “I’m just not that sort of person.”

Rimmer didn’t respond. As far as he knew this conversation never happened. 

“Alright smeghead, have it your way.” Lister picked up speed and turned around with a swivel of his heel. “And if it helps; ya not the only one.” Lister said with a knowing smile before turning back around, sprinting to the gates to ensure that he would get a decent gun and seat on the White Midget transport that they went down on their missions on. 

Rimmer stopped in his tracks for a second. He shook his head with a nasal ‘nahhh’ before he kept on walking. Not Lister; not the man who had spent his entire life in the same black, hole-covered undershirt and refused to shower in the communal showers. Not the Lister who put a Red Dwarf medibay-labelled gel on his arm every week or so. And definitely not the same Lister who had been the lucky one to apparently get pregnant in another universe from a compatibly-sexed double of himself, a universe that somehow rearranged his body parts to allow that to happen. 

Don’t be so preposterous.


End file.
